Bug 501350

Summary:	There's no way to turn off the relatime filesystem mount misfeature.
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Bruce Jerrick <bmj001>
Component:	util-linux-ng	Assignee:	Karel Zak <kzak>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	11	CC:	jhettmer, kzak
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	2.14.2-11.fc11	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2009-09-19 00:16:30 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Bruce Jerrick 2009-05-18 17:05:03 UTC

Description of problem:
There's no way to turn off the relatime filesystem mount misfeature.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
util-linux-ng-2.14.2-8.fc11.src.rpm
kernel-2.6.29.3-140.fc11.src.rpm

How reproducible:
100%

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Mount (or remount) a filesystem with '-o norelatime'
2. Look at its entry in /proc/mounts
  
Actual results:
relatime is set

Expected results:
relatime should not be set if 'o norelatime' is given

Additional info:
Examination of the code shows the problem.  In the do_mount() routine
in fs/namespace.c as modified by linux-2.6-relatime-by-default.patch
in the kernel source package, mnt_flags is initialized to 0, then has
MNT_RELATIME or'd in unconditionally.  The only way to clear that bit
is by having MS_STRICTATIME set in the flags parameter of do_mount()
(passed in via mount(2)), but mount(8) has no provision to do that --
when given the norelatime option, it just omits MS_RELATIME from the
mount(2) mountflags argument.

Comment:
It would be nice to have a boolean default_relatime kernel boot option;
F8 and F9 had that (linux-2.6-smarter-relatime.patch) but it went away
in F10.

Comment 1 Karel Zak 2009-05-19 07:27:20 UTC

Good point. Thanks.

The MS_STRICTATIME support is already in upstream mount(8) code. I'll backport it to F10 and F11.

Comment 2 Bug Zapper 2009-06-09 16:03:33 UTC

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 11 development cycle.
Changing version to '11'.

More information and reason for this action is here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping

Comment 3 Fedora Update System 2009-09-17 10:53:49 UTC

util-linux-ng-2.14.2-11.fc11 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 11.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/util-linux-ng-2.14.2-11.fc11

Comment 4 Fedora Update System 2009-09-19 00:16:24 UTC

util-linux-ng-2.14.2-11.fc11 has been pushed to the Fedora 11 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

Comment 5 Jim 2009-09-21 22:23:59 UTC

Thank yiou.  The strictatime explanation in man (8) mount will be confusing to many users.